Official Xbox: Series X | Series S Thread

[DEADWOODZ]

2 hours ago, Jason said:

 

Pretty sure the long awaited update for the Xbox App is finally out that installs games w/o any of that fuss I think?

 

Basically should be able to treat the game as if it were a Steam game IIRC. I think they finally released that update... I think, lol.

 

It's out, aye. You can access the files now by selecting more actions. Tried doing the HxD work around but still no luck.

 

Ahhhh, as i was typing this i found someone already released a tool for the game pass version, lol.

Edited March 11 by DEADWOODZ

[Jason]

14 minutes ago, DEADWOODZ said:

It's out, aye. You can access the files now by selecting more actions. Tried doing the HxD work around but still no look.

 

Ahhhh, as i was typing this i found someone already released a tool for the game pass version, lol.

 

Ah, shame you still can't HxD edit the Xbox app versions. Not surprised there's an app that fixes it though now you mention it, I've used similar stuff for The Ascent in the past.

 

GotG is yet another game where the lack black bars make no sense cause they game is to my memory completely flawless without them. Not sure I even remember any t-posing or paused characters waiting to come into frame or whatever like you see now and then in other games - ACV comes to mind for that lol.

[Mister Pink]

For those of you with Dying Light 2, they fixed performance issues on Series X and added a 60fps Performance mode for Series S. 

 

Patch 1.2.0 for Xbox is here! - Dying Light 2 – Official website (dyinglightgame.com)

[GTA3Rockstar]

Only thing I wish they would change is that both players get the story progression, not just the host.

[Jason]

4 hours ago, GTA3Rockstar said:

Only thing I wish they would change is that both players get the story progression, not just the host.

 

I'm real tired of co-op games that are designed like this. State of Decay 2 is another one, it makes you (as a co-op partner) feel like you're just there to kill stuff as you can't do much else, if anything else at all.

 

It's a big reason why for me Borderlands is still one of the kings of co-op, BL3 in particular even with it's faults.

[Failed Again]

Been watching this for a while now, saw it in a Kickstarter, but now it's moving into mainstream media so ..here's a look\

xScreen turns an Xbox Series S into a portable console (msn.com)

 

 

 

 

Skip (if you like to 1:34) Basic review begins

Edited March 21 by Failed Again

[Mister Pink]

FidelityFX is now available. It should be available for registered developers on the Xbox GDK (devkits).

 

Last week, AMD promised a new technology that should let you blow up your games to higher resolutions or increase their framerates without requiring the fancy machine learning hardware of Nvidia’s GPUs like Nvidia’s lauded DLSS. Now at GDC 2022, it’s revealing how the new FidelityFX Super Resolution 2.0 actually works — and that it’s coming to Microsoft’s Xbox game consoles too.

 

AMD says FSR 2.0 will run on Xbox and these Nvidia graphics cards - The Verge

 

This should mean consoles will be able to target and hopefully lock at 60fps at increased resolutions. Hopefully, we'll see more 4K 60fps games at with Quality mode resolutions. 

 

It should also be a great boost for the Series S. I know they upscale some games to 4K but this will certainly help. Lets just hope develops use these features. Xbox can only provide options, it's up to the devs to use them. 

[Jason]

FSR 2.0 looks very promising as well based on what AMD have shown thus far. We'll have to see it in motion to properly judge but I imagine it'll be solid enough and most people will be very unlikely to notice the downsides of the tech anyway, even then the tech is getting better and better all the time for both DLSS and FSR.

 

Will be interesting to see how it's used in the console space as on PC's it's always optional but I'm curious if any console devs will have it locked on and rely on it for performance boosts. Hope it doesn't become a crux devs rely on and instead allow them to push performance and quality modes a bit further.

[trip]

Ya'll see this tidbit?

Xbox Series X User Warns of Issue Making Your Games Run Slower

 

At 5% slower I half feel we would have heard more stink if this is a thing.  But still...

[Mister Pink]

14 hours ago, trip said:

Ya'll see this tidbit?

Xbox Series X User Warns of Issue Making Your Games Run Slower

 

At 5% slower I half feel we would have heard more stink if this is a thing.  But still...

That's a really interesting find. I ran a test on Edge on my Xbox and mine is looking normal. It's very easy that it could have gone unnoticed. Sounds like it might be a unique and isolated case, although very coincidental that the chap had two consoles to compare, and to have the wherewithal to do some good troubleshooting.  

[trip]

Was it that tesstufo dealie?

 

I did the testufo dealie on Edge but wasn't sure what I should be looking for nor did I see any sort of baseline to compare to.  It was later in my day when I came across the article so maybe I just need to read more detail.

 

Having an early in the production Series X, I sure hope this is a just wacky isolated issue.

[Mister Pink]

29 minutes ago, trip said:

Was it that tesstufo dealie?

 

I did the testufo dealie on Edge but wasn't sure what I should be looking for nor did I see any sort of baseline to compare to.  It was later in my day when I came across the article so maybe I just need to read more detail.

 

Having an early in the production Series X, I sure hope this is a just wacky isolated issue.

That's correct, Testufo.com.  According to the OP, no option changes need to be made on the website. Just to test that it's at 60hz and some frames are 60fps or under (some frames will drop). According to him, his slower XSX ran consistently at 63hz and 63fp. 

 

Quote

 

My normal XSX shows 60 FPS and 60Hz. My slower XSX shows 63 FPS and 63Hz. This is consistent with a slow clock. The function to calculate FPS will count more frames if time runs slower....

..My system clock time will drift by 2 minutes in 40 minutes. I restarted both and the system clock synchronized over the internet to 10:00 AM. Twenty minutes later one was 10:20 and the slower 10:19. Twenty three minutes later one was 10:43 and the slower 10:40.

 

 

He reset the XSX and changed all the cables before trying this. So, it sounds like his particular machine appears to have some clock issue, however a guy on iFixit suspects it's not the clock. 

 

Quote

Xbox SoC actually has anti-tempering measures to lock the system out in case it detects power or clock manipulation, so on top of the functional level issue described above, I believe the clock actually works.

 

My consoles is a day one purchase too, and no issues. Wouldn't worry about this. Sounds very isolated. 

[Failed Again]

^ this is why we need to make DST permanent.

MS goes Medieval on Sony

 

Exclusive: Microsoft is moving ahead with an Xbox Game Pass Family Plan

 

Exclusive: Microsoft is moving ahead with an Xbox Game Pass Family Plan | Windows Central

Edited April 1 by Failed Again

[Exsanguination]

Finally found a series x today at GameStop… installing forza horizon 5 right now, can’t wait to see how it looks …. 

[Shadowfennekin]

5 hours ago, Exsanguination said:

Finally found a series x today at GameStop… installing forza horizon 5 right now, can’t wait to see how it looks …. 

Yeah, I heard they're more readily available now. It's nice!

 

I mostly use mine to play the same damn games but it is quite nice loading into GTA IV, Saints Row 2, Fallout New Vegas and 3 within seconds of starting the game up! Maybe I'll attempt a "Chronology" run of IV and Episodes of Liberty City were I do the missions in the right order as switching won't be a pain in the ass lol

[Mister Pink]

7 hours ago, Shadowfennekin said:

Yeah, I heard they're more readily available now. It's nice!

 

I mostly use mine to play the same damn games but it is quite nice loading into GTA IV, Saints Row 2, Fallout New Vegas and 3 within seconds of starting the game up! Maybe I'll attempt a "Chronology" run of IV and Episodes of Liberty City were I do the missions in the right order as switching won't be a pain in the ass lol

Yeah and it's nice that those older games install in about 5mins too. 

 

My Game Pass is running out. It was a nice year. I'm not going to renew it for a while and just play some games in the backlog, including my more recent GTA IV save. I got as far as Playbox X conclusion. After that, I might consider getting the GTA DE if it's on sale somewhere. No paying full price for it. 

 

13 hours ago, Exsanguination said:

Finally found a series x today at GameStop… installing forza horizon 5 right now, can’t wait to see how it looks …. 

Congrats on getting a Series X. Hope you'll enjoy it as much as I have been enjoying it. It's really been a top console so far and I love the cross over of enjoying existing titles or last gen titles. Games like RDR 1 are 4K, 60fps. Also, check out Splinter Cell: Blacklist - that was optimized for One X so, it's looks great on Series X. 

 

Also, Fallout 4 is now 60fps. Playing optimized games for Series X is great. People say there's a drought on Xbox right now in exlusives department. I think those guys are crazy. Between Game Pass, and older gen games being optimized with frame unlocks and auto-HDR there are plenty of games old and new to discover and rediscover. 

[Exsanguination]

I’m tickled with it, resident evil village and forza 5 horizon look absolutely amazing 

 

good to know about FO4, I haven’t done a play through in a while.

[Jason]

MS has yet to get going with their 1st party this gen so far which is sorta the issue, where as Sony have Spider-Man: MM, R&C, Horizon FW, Demon Souls, Returnal and GT7. Meanwhile, on Xbox, we've really only had - outside of some niche stuff like AoE 4 and MS Flight sim - FH5 and Halo Infinite and the latter launched missing key features and has massively struggled to fix issues it's had since launch.

 

This will hopefully start to change soon with games like Starfield and Redfall of course and they should be getting stronger ever year with 1st party games as their giant line up of studios start finishing up their 1st projects since MS acquired them or founded the studio, games like Fable, Avowed, Contraband, Elder Scrolls VI, etc etc. The future is very bright for Xbox and Games Pass, we just gotta wait a little while longer for it to really get going.

 

That all being said however the one thing MS did very well is make sure their last-gen 1st party stuff all look and play well on the new consoles, almost all (if not all) got S|X patches and all of them are on Games Pass. A lot of people skipped the Xbox One generation so being able to play all the games they missed out on at (usually) 60fps is great. Not so much a problem for me as I have a PC too, but through games pass and my mates who jumped back to Xbox we've been checking out all the stuff we missed and I can't imagine we're the only ones.

[Mister Pink]

New Unreal Engine 5 demo from The Coalition (Gears devs). 

 

 

 

Full 'The State of Unreal Engine' presentation

 

Edit: Other good news, Series X is available in a lot of places now. I even checked some of the local big retailers in my country and they have them .

PSA: the Xbox Series X is (finally) easier to buy - The Verge

Edited April 5 by Mister Pink

[Jason]

Crystal Dynamics announced they're another dev (along with CDPR) that are abandoning their in-house engine and making the next Tomb Raider on UE5.

 

Really, really not a fan of this technology consolidation going on. CD's engine was solid as well, their games looked great and ran well on PC too.

 

I'm speculating but it's perhaps a consequences of the rising engine development costs so studios are instead freeing up in-house resources and switching to UE5.

[Mister Pink]

Yeah, I mean if it frees up the how they do their job and just lets them do their job. I don't think it's a bad idea, on the surface.

 

I'm not a game developer so I don't know what it's like to develop on CDPR's engine (RED Engine 4). It could be awful or might have awful features. It may have worked well for The Witcher but not so much Cyberpunk 2077.. I think it could be possible to get great results from an average or even poor game engine. I'm using CDPR as an example, not that I'm privy to anything. We just play the end product, we don't have to experience using the tools to make the product.

 

Benefits of mass or industry adoption of one type of engine is when hiring new devs they don't have to go through some learning curve get familiar with the in-house engine. Developers with Unreal Engine experience will should be able to more seamlessly move between projects ie. between developers. 

 

Also, what happens when you have the top devs that know how to use the in-house engine the best leave? Who's going to carry the torch, so to speak? In an industry where devs may only stay for one project and move to another company it would certainly be beneficial to the the employee and the company (IMO) if that employee has a deep understanding  Unreal Engine technology, if the new company is using that tech. I can only imagine it could be a hinderance if one dev went from using RAGE to Crytek to RED Engine. Yes, you'd have diverse skills in multiple engines but you that would really only benefit the individual, not the current game project at hand. because they'd still be stuck using one engine. 

 

Obviously, I'm speculating as a layman but might be speed up development times in world building and environments where they can allocate more time to making the game better in other areas such as mission diversity etc. Having said all this, I'm sure Unreal Engine has it's limits too. A developer having their own engine allows them to do more specific tasks for specific elements of their game which an out-of-the-box solution like UE5 might not provide. However, if your company are responsible to keep your game engine optimized and there is some failure there, that can impact a whole project and there will be no ombudsman to make sure the engine is optimal, because it's all in-house. And a developer can't reach outside the company for help. 

 

But, using UE, with developer feedback, updates and demands from more developers using UE5 hopefully UE can mitigate these issues by adding updates and features specific to the demands of individual developers. With thousands of devs using it, there should be a wealth of information to assist people in using the tech better. 

 

Speaking of CDPR, they actually have a video on the subject of moving to UE

 

 

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

EDIT: As this is an Xbox thread, going to try keep it more on-topic. 

 

The Coalition (Gears 5) were brought on board to assist with the recent Matrix Unreal Engine demo. The Coalition are highly regarded as a dev team using Unreal Engine 5. I haven't played Gears as it's not really my jam and I know it's a more linear experience but it was probably the nicest looking game on Xbox One, hands down. I might just download it to check it out and see what it's all about. 

 

 

While we're on the subject.. here are the Xbox studios using Unreal Engine 5

 

Edited April 6 by Mister Pink

[Jason]

It could also definitely be a response to all the technical issues we've seen in recent years, cause while I'm not a fan of big devs abandoning their engines, Unreal is a world class engine that's a well oiled machine at this point.

[Spider-Vice]

A few of those already used Unreal anyway so in terms of the Xbox studios it doesn't mean much. Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (Ninja Theory) was UE4, Sea of Thieves (Rare) was UE4, The Outer Worlds (Obsidian) was UE4, Psychonauts 2 (Double Fine) was on UE4, etc etc.

[DEADWOODZ]

 

[Jason]

Can't say much interests me there.

 

Also I was thinking earlier about Redfall, it was announced for 2022 and seemingly for middleish of the year. I... sorta feel like MS may shadow drop it at their MS summer show? Maaaaaybe? I just remember seeing gameplay leaks from it and they've been very silent on it thus far, and shadow dropping 1st party stuff onto GP seems like something MS will do now and then.

[HarryTVisitor]

I'm sure someone's already said it in this thread, but these things make for amazing emulation boxes! I got my Series S about a week ago now and for a majority of the time I've been tinkering around with Retroarch and have been mucking about with PlayStation 2 and GameCube games on it!

[Zello]

4 hours ago, HarryTVisitor said:

I'm sure someone's already said it in this thread, but these things make for amazing emulation boxes! I got my Series S about a week ago now and for a majority of the time I've been tinkering around with Retroarch and have been mucking about with PlayStation 2 and GameCube games on it!

I'm jealous

Does it work probably? Is it like 60 FPS or are there the occasional problems? Also can you use a disc or do you download them?

[HarryTVisitor]

15 minutes ago, Zello said:

I'm jealous

Does it work probably? Is it like 60 FPS or are there the occasional problems? Also can you use a disc or do you download them?

Most games work, though it's not like they all work sadly, some just simply don't emulate correctly or are a wee bit too powerful for the Series S to handle. But for the most part, most games work excellently, even being able to be upscaled to 1080p! As for discs, I can't try it myself due to the lack of a disc drive the Series S has, but I doubt it anyway. Not like it's too bad though, you can easily play roms & such off USB!

[Failed Again]

9 hours ago, HarryTVisitor said:

Most games work, though it's not like they all work sadly, some just simply don't emulate correctly or are a wee bit too powerful for the Series S to handle. But for the most part, most games work excellently, even being able to be upscaled to 1080p! As for discs, I can't try it myself due to the lack of a disc drive the Series S has, but I doubt it anyway. Not like it's too bad though, you can easily play roms & such off USB!

 this may be of interest

 and earlier this for Xbox

 

You can skip to 1: 30 if you like 

 

Edited April 7 by Failed Again

[Tacymist]

Just ordered a Series X. @0909090 gave me the heads up earlier. =]

 

Now I'm gonna keep an eye out for my console in work all week. That's a nice perk working for FedEx, we can take our packages home if we happen to spot them.